


Rainbow Warrior

by Scoby



Category: The Mandalorian (TV)
Genre: Activist Din Djarin, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, Chaotic Single Dad, Ecoterrorist Mandalorians, Fluff, ManDadlorian, Past Din Djarin/Xi'an, Single Parent Din Djarin
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-02
Updated: 2021-02-07
Packaged: 2021-03-14 23:27:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,029
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28553868
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Scoby/pseuds/Scoby
Summary: “What’s that?” Cara’s voice sounds icier than the surrounding air and water. “There’s no way you’ll climb up there with a gun.”“Weapons are my creed. And our ship is theRainbowWarrior. We’re supposed to celebrate diversity.”“But we’re Greenpeace! This is a fully non-violent operation.”“That’s fine, I’m not gonna use it.” Din grabs a large steel chain leaning upwards from the water, large enough for both his hands and feet to grab a secure hold inside the links, and starts climbing. Only when he is a couple of meters up does he add: “As long as they don’t give me a reason to.”
Relationships: Din Djarin & Cara Dune & Fennec Shand & Boba Fett, Din Djarin & Grogu | Baby Yoda
Comments: 9
Kudos: 24





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> The theme song for this fic is [Fight song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xo1VInw-SKc) by Rachel Platten
> 
> Moodboard photos from Greenpeace, phys.org and Siripong Kaewla-iad

“Shit!”

Din kicks his foot against the wall hard enough to send himself into a wide swing. He shakes his aching arms and wipes his sweaty hands on his pants before reaching behind his back for the chalk bag. Fingers slightly more white, he lets his breathing steady before grabbing the holds again.

It costs him swearing and grunting aloud, but this time he makes it past the point where he has to pull himself up with practically only three fingers. As soon as that is done and he gets his foot on the higher hold, the final metres are easy. Or would be if his arms were not already sore.

“Almost there, you got this!” Fennec’s voice comes from somewhere diagonally above him. Her route has been more difficult overall but without the particularly nasty spot close to the end. Apparently, she has made it up faster and stayed to watch him. He is not going to indulge her with falling a single time more.

Focusing on being fast, he sweeps himself up to the final hold on Fennec’s level. Through panting breaths, he manages a thumb up and a smile at her before they both look down and shout:

“Ready!”

Cara nods back at him and starts slowly loosening his rope to lower him down.

“Anyone still wanna try this?” Fennec points back at the wall she just got down from. “It’s a little nasty but fun.”

“Not today”, Boba says, already stripping his harness. “Anyway, there should be nothing that tricky on the rig. The holds are gonna be easy. It’ll just be freezing.”

Fennec nods and frees her hips from her harness, feet from her shoes and long, black dreadlocks from their braid. “Wanna grab dinner at Chalmun’s Veg?”

“Sure”, “Why not”, Cara and Boba answer straight away and all eyes turn to Din.

“I think I’ll just grab something from the back shelf”, he says.

“You know it’s all vegan, right?” Fennec tries. “And they have several dishes without rice if you really want to minimise the footprint.”

“Can’t beat the back shelf in that”, Din insists.

“Ok, fine, see you next Monday then”, Cara says, unvelcroing her own shoes. ”So it’ll be the final training and the next time will be on the rig, right? Ready for that?”

“Always.”

In his head, Din thinks that this is not even going to be difficult. The last time he climbed outdoors was on Alzoc dam in Uruguay, with a backpack full of explosives. But it was almost three years ago, so he has taken it seriously to train with the rest of the crew every Monday to make sure to stay in shape.

In fact, he has been as religious about it as he is about showing up weekly at the shooting range and mixed martial arts practice – a training regimen he picked up from his foster parents. But about that, he does not really talk about with the others. They know that his parents died and he was brought up in a cult after that, but more details he has not shared. He has a feeling that they would not look at him with this kind of friendliness if he would.

Din strips his harness, packs it in his backpack, has a drink from his bottle and frees his feet from the grip of the tight shoes. He tries to dust off the worst of the chalk but manages to only spread it around before stuffing the shoes in his backpack, too. He dresses up in his outdoor clothes and follows the others to the exit.

Outside, he waves a hand as a goodbye when he turns to a different direction to head home. But not straight. Not before he has taken care of his dinner. When he reaches the supermarket on his way home, he blends smoothly in the shadows to sneak behind the building where the loading dock is – along with the trash containers.

A couple of cashiers are smoking next to the trash area, so he waits patiently for them to dump their cigarettes and disappear inside before heading for the biowaste containers. This time, he finds several kilos of broccoli, all gone black but only in the middle; five pots of cilantro, each containing approximately half good, half rotten leaves; a few bunches of bananas at the exactly best shade of yellow and brown; a few kilos of potatoes that look questionable but worth the risk; and a box full of cucumbers that seem to be still perfectly in their prime. He stuffs as much as he can in his backpack and the rest in the two extra bags he brought with him and hurries to sneak out before more employees show up for a break.

At home, he separates the best parts of broccoli, potatoes and cilantro and throws them into a soup. He munches through a whole cucumber while cooking. Once the food is ready, he opens his laptop and starts eating and scrolling through Twitter at the same time. He does his normal routine of liking all the tweets he agrees with and retweeting the best ones. Then he uploads a selfie he took of himself, Cara, Fennec and Boba at the climbing gym today and posts it with text:

@Greenpeace #RainbowWarrior crew ready for a strike against #ArcticOil next week. Norway, you’ll regret letting @Shell drill on your seas! #NoToArcticOil #PeopleVsArcticOil #SaveTheArctic #ShellNO

He is continuing scrolling when his phone rings.

“Hello.”

_Is it Din Djarin?_

“Yes.”

_Do you have a moment to talk?_

“Yes. Who is it?”

_I’m a social worker. I regret that I have to tell you that Xi’an Malk is dead._

“Oh, is she?” He wonders what to say. It has been more than two years since he has been in any contact with Xi’an. And the last time was such a horrendous fight that it is no wonder that neither of them wanted to ever see each other again. Still, he would of course never wish for her death.

“How?” he finally manages to ask.

_She arranged a major scene in Brazil. She exposed dozens of politicians who had taken bribes to allow for burning of protected rainforest for livestock ranging. Obviously, the government didn’t like it and she was captured and executed under shady conditions. Brazilian Amnesty is investigating what exactly has happened and working on making the government liable for their crimes. Xi’an is not the only activist they have recently killed._

Din nods quietly to himself. That sounds exactly like Xi’an. She was always reckless, and human lives – including her own – had little significance in her mind when full ecosystems needed her protection. And there used to be a time when she got Din with her anywhere she went. And they went from demonstration to demonstration, lobby to lobby, board room to board room, always trying the peaceful avenues first but eventually taking matters into their own, stronger hands, if the politicians or corporations were not ready to do their part. Still, that was a long time ago, and surely Xi’an should have family or other people who would be a lot more important to inform about this than Din.

“Why are you calling me about this?”

 _Because she left a child_.

“And?”

 _Your child_.

“What? But…” He is about to protest and say that this has to be a misunderstanding because there is no way that is possible. But then he remembers one particular night with her - one that ended up with a broken condom. Back then, Xi’an brushed it off with her usual laugh, saying that it was not a big deal as it was most likely not a fertile time for her anyway. So he let himself forget about it. And soon they started to fight so much that he had plenty of other things on his mind.

Apparently, it ended up as a bigger deal than she had thought. And he had probably been enough of an asshole (because of her provocation) that she wanted to keep the whole thing secret from him once she found out. Or did he even block her number so that she could not reach him even if she would have wanted to? He cannot think of anything to say before the social worker continues:

_We have Grogu here in emergency shelter. We are expecting you to pick him up tomorrow._

“Tomorrow? No, no, no, I can’t take care of a child right now. I’m going to sea next week, with the Rainbow Warrior, to climb on an oil rig. I can’t…”

_Well, you’re a father now. Perhaps you should rethink your priorities._

After ending the call, Din buries his face in his hands. Doing an approximate math, Grogu should be about two years old. What the hell is he going to do with a two-year-old? Should he google? Two-year-old development?

He quickly notices that googling was a mistake. The Internet is full of stressful lists about what a two-year-old should be able to do and say. He speaks so little and feels so goddamn socially awkward already by himself. How could he ever teach a child to speak or in any way be a decent person?

And the address of the emergency shelter that the social worker gave him is almost on the other side of the city. He will need to go by bike but how is he going to get a toddler on it even remotely safely? And most importantly, what the fucking hell is he going to do with the Rainbow Warrior mission?

The next day, Din shows up at the emergency shelter with a carboard box strapped on the front rack of his bike. A social worker greets him when he enters and, after checking his ID, hands him a folder of papers and a small bag with a few toys and tiny clothes. Then, she takes him to the next room where a bunch of kids are huddled around another social worker who is reading them a story book.

When she turns the book around for the kids to watch a picture, Din’s heart skips a beat when the smallest boy looks up – with his own brown eyes. And when the boy takes in the picture and likes it, his mouth curves into a grin that looks just like Xi’an’s.

“Sorry, I’m interrupting just for a second”, the first social worker says, lifts up exactly that little boy and says more softly to his peculiarly large ear: “Grogu, your daddy’s here.”

As a response, she gets a babble of a few ambiguous syllables. And next, miraculously, like she was not even aware of what kind of child welfare hazard she is risking, she simply hands Grogu to Din. He hooks Grogu’s bag on his elbow and stuffs the folder under the same arm so that he can use one arm to hold him and gosh, he is so light and still so full of life and somehow magically not afraid of his stranger-father at all but eyeing him so curiously that looks like his eyes could pop out. And Din is terrified that maybe he will do something that makes those eyes pop out for real with a squirt of blood, or crush this tiny being by accidentally stepping on him, or choke him by letting him eat banana in too large bites or just shower a little too long so that he gets flushed with the water into the sewage.

But a few seconds pass and nothing happens. His son is still alive and groping his shoulder. So he nods at the social workers as a thank you and walks out – or rather glides, trying to avoid bouncing. When he is carefully pushing the front door open, the social worker winks at him from behind her desk by the entrance.

“You can walk normally when you carry him, you know. The bouncing is good for the kid’s stomach.”

Din breathes out in relief. He had been worried about how steadily he would be able to bike back. Now, he manages to relax to some degree when he sets Grogu down in the cardboard box.

“I have no seatbelts for this, so you just gotta be still and hold on. Can you do that?”

The curious, brown eyes just stare up at him and blink a couple of times. He takes it as a yes and packs Grogu’s folder and bag in his own backpack. Then, he hops on the bike and tries his best to ride normally but safely, whatever that means.

Google told him that he should keep talking about what he is doing while he is doing it. That should be how children learn to speak most effectively. He feels unbearably awkward but opens his mouth to try it out in any case.

“So we’re just biking now. Along this street. Do you like it? We’re going home. Or soon we are. First, daddy will get us dinner. From the back shelf.”

Once they get to the supermarket, he rides straight behind it. There is nobody around the loading dock, so he parks the bike right next to the trash containers and hops off.

“Now you stay there.” He lifts a finger in front of Grogu to emphasise his point. “Understood? Stay. There.”

Then he starts searching through the containers. There are some packages of Brussels sprouts this time, looking all yellow but typically they still have good, green layers underneath. And about a kilo of acceptable-looking nectarines. Apart from that, it looks exceptionally empty today. But in the final container he checks, he notices it: a slab of vacuum-packed beef, expired yesterday.

He debates in his head. Meat from the back shelf is always a risk. Just for himself, he would take it any time if the expiry date was only one day behind. But eating that with a toddler…

He hears the rumble of the carboard trash compactors springing to life next to him. That sounds usually forebodes somebody coming out to bring in more cardboard trash. So he makes a quick decision and stashes the beef into his backpack.

Just as he closes the container, he hears a crash. He turns to its direction and there it is, his bike on the ground and his little son next to it, tapping the handlebar.

“Bababababa”

“Yes, it’s my bike. And you should have stayed in that box like I told you so you wouldn’t have fallen. Are you ok?”

The boy does not look like injured so Din lifts the bike up to standing and picks him up to place him back in the box. He smiles and taps the forearm that is holding him.

“Dada”

“Yeah, this is daddy’s bike”, Din rambles as he puts him down and grips the handlebars to turn them around. “And we’re not exactly in a legal place right now, and somebody’s coming, so we’ll ride it really fast out of here, ok?”

“Dadadadababa”

“Ok”

He pedals fervently around the corner just as the door opens and somebody pushes out a rack full of cardboard trash.

At home, Din opts for frying the meat so long that the surface turns black. That should kill any nasty thing that was potentially alive in there. As a side, he makes a stir fry out of the good parts of the Brussels sprouts with yesterday’s broccoli and potatoes.

When Grogu eats his first pieces, Din can only watch, holding his breath and waiting for the moment when he is going to choke. But it does not happen. In fact, Grogu seems to be enjoying himself, so he gradually resumes breathing and starts eating his own portion.

“Do you like it?”

Grogu coos in response and a piece of charred meat he is holding drops from his hand to the floor.

“Fuck”, his bright voice says with surprising articulation. He slides himself off from the chair with two pillows on it to make it higher. When he picks up the piece from the floor to his mouth and climbs up on the elevated chair again, Din raises an eyebrow.

“Did mommy teach you that?”

“Mommy”, he repeats and blows a raspberry.

“Fine. Looks like I don’t have to watch it, then.”

He pauses for a moment, trying to read Grogu’s face for any signs that could have been caused by the mentioning of his mother. But he seems fully focused on his food again.

“You know you don’t have mommy anymore, right? It's just us now. But it'll be ok”, he assures both of them. “I’ll take care of you. We’ll figure it out.”

Then his attention is drawn by his son’s plate, from which almost all the beef has disappeared.

“How about you eat the vegetables, too?”

Grogu’s eyes narrow as his fingers grab what is left of the beef to rip off another piece and stuff it in his mouth, making Din sigh.

“Just try them, ok?”

As his proposal still has no effect, he tries to reason with him:

“You should know that it’s not every day we find meat in the back shelf. And this stuff is way too unethical and unsustainable to buy. So you’d better be used to…”

Grogu chews and swallows his final piece of beef and resolutely hops down from the chair and toddles towards Din’s bedroom.

“Fuck”, Din mutters himself. “Tomorrow you’ll eat because there’ll most likely be nothing else.”

Then, he adopts Grogu’s plate and starts eating the vegetables from it himself. Once he has finished and done the dishes, he finds out that the boy has searched through the contents of the backpack he spread out on the bedroom floor earlier and found his own toys. Now, he is sitting on the bed, playing with a grey bunny whose ears have almost come off.

Din grabs the folder of papers from the floor and sits next to him to open it. The papers say that Grogu is not quite two years old yet. In fact, his second birthday will be in a couple of weeks, the day before Din should be busy climbing on that rig. Shit. He is not any closer to deciding what he will do about that.

Still, he focuses first on browsing through the whole folder and reading about a bunch of things he does not understand much about, such as Grogu’s vaccination history and notes from medical checkups. The newest one of them has even a box where he has drawn some kind of mess with a crayon. Below that, somebody has ticked a box that identifies the drawing as “satisfactory for his age”.

He packs the papers away and opens twitter on his phone. But he only taps a few likes here and there, too absent-minded to come up with a tweet of his own. It is difficult to say anything excited about the Rainbow Warrior’s mission when it is all such a big mess in his head right now.

When he closes the phone, he notices that Grogu has fallen asleep, head against his thigh, hugging the bunny close to his heart. His tiny mouth is a bit open, with occasional snuffles escaping. Carefully, Din moves a hand to stroke the thin hair on the little head.

_Perhaps you should rethink your priorities._

Yes, that is exactly what he should do, now that he has a son. A son who can live to see the 22nd century. The century when IPCC expects a global warming of six degrees according to the business-as-usual scenario. The very scenario that the Norwegian government is currently evoking by dealing out permits to drill for arctic oil – and Shell by going for it.

Cautiously, Din lifts the sleeping child so that he can stand up and put him down with his head on the pillow, as close to the wall side of the bed as possible. Then, he gently pulls the covers over him, tiptoes out and softly closes the bedroom door so that he can make a phone call without waking him up. There is no more room for the mission to fail.


	2. Chapter 2

He goes through once more the contents of his pack. The box that is not for the rest of the crew to see is securely buried under his and Grogu’s clothes. They spent the previous day at a flea market, finding a tiny life vest and puff coat. Also, Din borrowed a few illustrated story books from the library. They will be back only after the loan period has ended, but since he found out that overdue fees do not apply to children’s books, it will not matter.

Din helps Grogu get dressed in the earthy brown coat that is still too big for him, almost reaching his ankles. He whines in distress, but Din insists on closing the zipper up to his chin.

“I know it’s hot now that we’re still indoors. But on the Arctic ocean, you’ll like it.”

Among Grogu’s old clothes, he has found a light green woolly hat with two bobbles that give an impression of ears. When his real ears under the hat push the bobbles out even further, the effect is – disarming. The hat goes together with a matching pair of mittens that, for some reason, have three compartments.

When Din holds the mouth of the mitten open in front of Grogu, he eagerly holds out his hand already in the matching position with thumb separated, index and middle finger together and distinct from ring finger and pinkie. And when Din slides the mitten on his hand so that the fingers go automatically to their compartments, he giggles so wholeheartedly that Din has to laugh a bit himself. Apparently, this is the reason for designing mittens like this.

The mittens have little clips that can be used to attach them to the coat sleeves so that Grogu will not lose them even if they come off his hands. Once Din clips them on, they are finally almost ready and he starts dressing up in his own coat. That is when Grogu says:

“Pee-pee.”

“What?”

“Pee-pee-pee.”

“Do you seriously need to pee right now?”

Grogu blinks his eyes and Din realises how very much preferable it is to suffer another delay now than to deal with his wet clothes when they get to the harbour.

“Ok, it’s good that you said it”, he sighs and starts peeling his layers back off.

The bike ride to the harbour is a little wobbly under the heavy pack. But at least Grogu is well fastened to his box as the oversized coat practically pins him in place. They show up a bit late, and he still has to vaguely explain why he suddenly has a toddler now. Thankfully, a vague explanation is sufficient and nobody asks about details like Grogu’s mother. Only Cara risks a cautious comment that they would have understood if Din would have wanted to cancel, but he glares at her so hard that everyone drops the subject.

Peli gets even visibly excited about getting Grogu on board. She pushes her camera bag behind her back so that she can lift him out of the cardboard box to her arms and lets out a constant stream of babble as she carries him into the ship. Din has to smile a little when following her. If she continues like this, maybe Grogu will learn to speak during this trip.

* * *

The morning breeze is icy when Din gets out on the deck. Peli is already in the bow, taking pictures of the sunrise over the Arctic Ocean, which is unquestionably gorgeous. He leans on the taffrail a couple of metres from her, enjoying the vastness and silence around them.

During almost every waking hour of the day, Peli is the chattiest person Din knows, but the sunrise and sunset hours are the exception. Those she spends totally immersed in photographing. They have been on board for more than a week now, and she has tweeted a few pictures of the rising or setting sun, along with a dozen of the crew. But she keeps saying that she is still looking for the perfect shot of the sunlight. When the sun is high enough for the perfect lightning window to have closed, Peli lowers her camera from her face and starts browsing the pictures.

“No, no, no, nope, hmmm, maybe… It’s tricky.”

“Wanna show me?” Din asks.

“Not yet, I haven’t got the perfect one. Maybe it’ll come when you guys are done. Then I can post it as a tweet of victory.”

“Do you think it’ll work? Like we just show up there and they’ll do as we ask?”

“Of course, that’s how all change is made, by people showing up. And if it doesn’t, I’ll make sure the world will know about it.”

“And what happens when they know about it?”

“Well, it’s bad publicity for Shell. That counts for something.”

“They have bad publicity all the time and still don’t fucking care.”

“Hey, have some faith.” Peli walks closer and softly punches Din’s arm through the thick coat. “The world is counting on us to bring them hope.”

Din responds to her wide smile with a hint of his own and follows her to the warm air inside. Peli disappears in the mess to prepare breakfast and Din continues back to the cabin where Grogu has already his eyes open. He is hugging his bunny and singing to it a children’s song that Peli has taught him, though the words are altered to his own gibberish.

“Good morning.” Din tickles his foot in the way that makes him giggle. Then he bends closer to whisper in his ear: “Happy birthday.”

Or he thinks he whispered it. But in the bed next to theirs, Boba is awake and alerted.

“What did you say? Is it his birthday?” Before Din can answer, he shouts at the top of his lungs: “It’s Grogu’s birthday!”

In seconds, Peli, Cara and Fennec are all gathered in the cabin.

“Oh, really? Your birthday! Your daddy should have told us earlier”, Peli rambles. “How old are you now. Can you show?”

When Grogu does not get it, Din helps him lift two fingers.

“That means that we should sing!” Fennec suggests and instantly, everyone joins her singing _Happy birthday to you_.

When the song ends, Peli claps her hands with excitement. “Let’s sing in other languages we know! Maybe he can learn something.”

“I don’t think he’ll learn much from just one song…” Din points out but Peli is already twisting her throat into alien-sounding, gurgling noises to sing in Dutch. Through some kind of miracle, she still manages to follow the melody.

After her, Fennec sings in Chinese and Boba in Maori. Din is thankful that Cara joins him in singing in Spanish. He is not a fan of singing solo. But what makes him perhaps even more uncomfortable is how Grogu grins when listening to them and looks a bit too much like Xi’an.

It reminds him of spending Xi’an’s birthday in Alzoc village in Uruguay, the day before their mission on the dam. He had planned to make it something quiet and special just for her, but their host overheard him wising her happy birthday, and the next thing they knew was the whole village celebrating her. And she did not mind at all. She smiled and laughed and chatted and danced with everyone like they were her family. And perhaps even the memory of it would be fun if not thinking about what happened the next day.

Din shakes the thought off his head when he realises how Grogu pouts a little, mirroring his anxiety. He forces on a touch of a smile and picks him up to take him to the mess for breakfast.

“Myself! Myself!” Grogu’s legs pedal in the air in protest and Din puts him down on the floor.

“Ok, you can walk yourself. Do you want my hand?”

He extends his hand down but Grogu ignores it and starts walking out of the cabin and towards the mess with careful steps. A wave tilts the ship and Din offers his hand again but Grogu manages to hold himself up by holding the wall instead. Encouraged by the success, he takes a few more victorious steps without holding anything, but then another wave comes and throws him off balance, down on the floor on his face. His lower lip quivers silently for a second before the heart-wrenching tears come.

“Da… Daddyyy! Waaaaa!!!”

Din squats instantly down to sweep him in his arms and he continues crying against his sweater-clad chest.

“It’s ok. I got you. It was just a wave. Just a little nasty wave. Did you get hurt somewhere?”

Grogu points at his knee, and Din bends his head down to gently blow at it.

“Ok, there, it’s healed. What do we say about it now?”

“Fuck it”, Grogu says, already smiling again.

“That’s right.” Din smiles back and wipes the tears off his little, puffy cheeks, ignoring Peli’s suspicious glare.

When he puts him down in the breakfast table, he is singing again, this time vaguely following the tune of _Happy birthday to you_. The words are his own but unquestionably imitating the original lyrics in Spanish.

That evening, it is Din’s turn to cook dinner. It is like a marvel to use a pantry containing ingredients in just the right proportions. At home, he is more used to having an excess of one random vegetable at a time. Here, he uses the rare opportunity to make a curry with tofu and five different vegetables, each in a similar amount.

Everyone else compliments his cooking, but Grogu has both his hands on his plate, poking his food and picking up only pieces of tofu into his mouth.

“Grogu, what have I told you about the vegetables?”

When he does not even lift his gaze from his ministrations, Boba fishes a particularly large piece of tofu with his fork from his own portion and says:

“Relax, Din. It’s his birthday. There are 364 other days in the year to eat vegetables.”

He hands the tofu chunk with his fork to Grogu, who grabs it straight in his hand and stuffs it in his mouth. Even with his mouth full of tofu, he manages to smile in the way that melts Din’s heart all too easily. Again, Din ends up eating his son’s share of vegetables himself.

For dessert, Peli produces from the stash a package of vegan cupcakes with bright turquoise icing.

“I was saving these for after the mission. But this is a more important occasion.” She smirks, distributes one for each and sits back to watch how Grogu all but inhales his own. After he has swallowed the last bite, he looks at the empty cupcake liner in distress.

“Auntie Peli, I - I fogo, I fogo!”

“You forgot something?" Peli asks. "Did you forget to taste it?”

Grogu nods, eyes looking like on the verge of tears. Before Din can say anything, Peli hands him another cupcake. And Din is thankful that she is so fast because there is no way he could deny anything from Grogu when he looks like this.

Later that night, when Grogu is asleep and quietly drooling on the pillow next to him and Boba’s steady snoring fills the cabin, he uses the cover of the blanket to open his phone and send one more text:

_Found the place? All set for tomorrow?_

In less than a minute, he gets a response:

_Found it. All set. This is the way._

_This is the way_ , he texts back, stuffs away his phone and arranges his head on the pillow to sleep.

* * *

The next morning, there is more to see on the deck than just the sunrise. Shell’s new oil rig looms right next to them. On the water, ice floes are floating around them and continuing behind the rig into a white and blue horizon. Grogu watches it while holding onto Din's knee, only nose and eyes visible from below his puff coat, life vest and woolly hat.

“If you want to watch, you’ll do exactly as Auntie Peli says. You stay right with her, and no climbing on the taffrail”, Din highlights once more and kneels down to try to pull the little woolly hat further down over the oversized ears.

“We’ll be fine”, Peli says. “The question is: are you ready?”

“We’ve been fucking ready ever since Norway authorised this fucking drilling, right?”

Cara, Fennec and Boba all nod by his side. Cara is warming up her arms by stretching them up and making adjustments to the assembly of her scarf and coverall to better accommodate the movement. Fennec braids her dreadlocks before covering her head with a black woolly hat and hands with thick gloves. Boba is just staring at the rig with burning hatred in his eyes.

“Ok, then, one more picture, give me a smile… Good… And then, give me your badass look, your _Shell no!_ face… That’s it!”

Peli keeps taking occasional pictures as they climb on a RIB and start loosening the ropes that lower them down to the water. With a short ride, they are below the rig and find a spot where to dock the RIB to one of its columns.

Din reaches for a steel ring on the column, one that an actual support ship or boat would use, to tie their rope to it. The combination of the movement of his arms and an arising blast of wind pushes his coat high enough to reveal a gun on his belt.

“What’s that?” Cara’s voice sounds icier than the surrounding air and water. “There’s no way you’ll climb up there with a gun.”

“Weapons are my creed. And our ship is the _Rainbow_ Warrior. We’re supposed to celebrate diversity.”

“But we’re Green _peace_! This is a fully non-violent operation.”

“That’s fine, I’m not gonna use it.” Din grabs a large steel chain leading upwards from the water, large enough for both his hands and feet to grab a secure hold inside the links, and starts climbing. Only when he is a couple of meters up does he add: “As long as they don’t give me a reason to.”


	3. Chapter 3

The climbing makes Din sweat despite the freezing air. The combination of the effort and the thick clothing makes him feel almost the same as under Uruguay’s sun on Alzoc dam. If he closes his eyes, he can almost believe that if he would look to his side, he would see Xi’an, grinning enthusiastically back at him, her purple hair in its high ponytail flowing in the wind.

When they were up, she squealed of excitement as they distributed the bombs around the midsection of the dam and ran to the brink to wait for the explosion. They had tried to convince the local energy company to do this in a controlled way. The artificial lake behind the dam had thrown off the whole ecosystem and kept releasing methane to the air, but the manager did not get the point that this was unacceptable. So this dam became one of the things they had to take into their own hands.

And as they watched on the brink, the water roared through the exploded dam into the valley below. There, it crushed too many houses for Din to be entirely comfortable with, including the one that had hosted them the night before, organised the spontaneous birthday party for Xi’an, offered them food and shelter even though that family was clearly not well off at all. Even though Din’s head more or less managed to shut it out of his thoughts, the rest of his body protested and made him throw up his breakfast on the ground that kept rumbling under the power of the water.

The sudden vivid memory of it raises bile to his throat even now. He pauses for a moment and tightens his grip of the chain. A glance up shows that he is almost there. He swallows, takes a deep breath of fresh arctic air and resumes climbing.

He is up on the rig first, followed quickly by Fennec, Boba and finally Cara. They all glare at him like a final silent reminder that they are on a firmly peaceful mission, but it passes fast because they all know that they are short of time. Resolutely, Cara unshoulders her backpack and digs out their banner. They hang it over the edge for Peli to photograph the human-sized letters: PEOPLE VS ARCTIC OIL.

While they are still at it, two men – one middle-aged and one about a decade younger - show up on the deck in white helmets and orange coveralls decorated with the yellow and red seashell logo on the chest.

“Excuse me, this is a restricted area, unauthorised access is denied”, the older man says.

“We have warned you.” Fennec lets others finish with the banner and faces the rig workers with burning eyes, planting her feet firmly apart on the deck. “We have told your headquarters that if this rig is not turned off and dismantled, we’ll be here to see to it ourselves. Your deadline was a month ago.”

“We heard about it, yes, but so have you heard that we cannot allow it. If you want to protest, you do it in the city and agree about it with the police. Here, we cannot guarantee your safety without appropriate...”

“You want us to be safe, huh?” Boba has finished tying up his corner of the banner and takes a menacing step towards the men. “In that case, you will shut off the pumps and dismantle this rig. None of us will be safe on a six degrees warmer Earth, and neither will you.”

“This discussion doesn’t belong here. If you want to discuss with our management team, you can…”

“We have discussed with your management team, multiple times.” Cara leaves the finished banner, too, approaches the older man with spite in her eyes and crosses her arms. “And they didn’t do anything. That left us no option. We’re not leaving before you turn off this rig and start dismantling it.”

“No. I order you to leave immediately.” The man’s voice starts to sound agitated.

Din makes a gesture of pressing his palm down through the air in an attempt to silence him as he steps up next to his friends. Then, he addresses the younger man for the first time: “You, what’s your name?”

He glances quickly at his companion who appears to be his boss, but as he only gets a frustrated sigh in return, he hesitantly replies: “Børje.”

“So, Børje, when have you been on the shore last time?” Din asks.

“Couple of days ago. Why?”

“And where do you live?”

“In Trondheim. This is ridiculous! You clearly heard that you’re obliged to leave this rig immediately.”

Still, none of them moves. They only stare at Din who is not following their plan and clearly not finished with the poor man.

"So your wife has been two days by herself in Trondheim, is that right, Børje?”

“What does my wife have to do with anything?”

“Just that you might want to call her.”

Børje does not move a muscle.

“You might want to call her right now”, Din repeats patiently but when he still gets no reaction, he raises his voice: “Call her, now!”

“Why? I don’t get this.”

“I was thinking you might not.” Calmly, Din picks up a gun from his belt and points it at Børje’s head. “Do it. Call her.”

“W-what?” His voice has turned shaky.

“You heard me. And if you’re thinking that I wouldn’t really shoot you, you’re terribly wrong.”

“You’re crazy.”

He fires a warning shot between the feet of the two rig workers. With trembling hands, Børje picks up a cellphone in its waterproof casing from the pocket of his coveralls. But before he can make a call himself, it rings. He gapes in surprise, accepts the call with a click and lifts the phone on his ear.

“Ingrid? Hvorfor ringer du…?” He falls silent in shock.

“Put it on speaker”, Din orders and he obeys.

A woman’s panicked voice streams out of the phone. She wails first in fragmented Norwegian, but a sound of a smack makes her shift to English.

“Børje, some strange woman broke in here with a gun. She says she’ll… she’ll...”

Her voice dies off into heavy, accelerating breaths. From somewhere further away but still unmistakable, Din can hear another voice, one that he recognises – Bo-Katan’s steady order:

“Tell him what I said. Tell him now!”

Another sound of a smack, and then the woman somehow gathers herself to say: “She’ll shoot me and the baby if you don’t do what that man tells you.”

“Whoever you are, get out of my home, immediately!” Børje yells at the phone.

A loud bang, a woman’s scream and a baby’s cry answer him, as somewhere in Trondheim, Bo-Katan fires a warning shot at the wall.

“The next one will hit her head”, she tells Børje through the speaker. “Or I don’t know. Your baby looks cute. Maybe I’ll deal with _her_ first.”

“Hands off them!”

“What? You don’t want me killing your child? Then why are you doing it yourself? At your age, she’ll be dead in the wars for habitable land, all because of what you’re drilling out from below the Arctic.”

“What the fuck? I just work here.”

“We understand”, Din says. “And we want to get this done without bloodshed, which is your preference, too, I’m sure. So get to the pump control room and shut everything off. And then you start dismantling this rig and get your colleagues from inside and from the shore to help.”

Børje still does not move. “Kill me if you have to, but let Ingrid and the baby live.”

“No!” Ingrid protests through the phone.

“In a little hero complex, are we?” Din asks. “Is that really your decision? Are you willing to die for Shell? What does this job even give you? Apart from paying your mortgage, your Tesla, your trips to Thailand and your baby breathing monitor?”

“I’m doing what’s right for my family, providing for them. You’d know if you…”

“I’m doing what’s right for my family, too.” Din fires another warning shot, this time between Børje’s feet, only hairs away from his left big toe.

The older man mumbles to him something in Norwegian and he nods at Din.

“We’ll do it. Tell that woman to get out of my house.”

“After the pumps are off”, Din says.

They all follow the oil rig workers to the pump control room, Din still pointing his gun at Børje’s head. The baby keeps crying through the phone with the speaker on. As they move across the deck, Cara squeezes closer to Din so that she can hiss in his ear through her teeth:

“What are you doing?”

“You saw it yourself", Din whispers back. "They didn’t do anything when you asked.”

Now, with shaky hands, the two men turn off every appliance in the pump control room, until all the humming has stopped and the room is completely silent. Then they use the intercom to announce to everyone on the rig that they must start disassembly and order a support ship from the shore.

“Tell her it’s done and she’ll leave my house immediately.” Børje extends his phone towards Din.

“Bo-Katan, it’s fine” he says. “They did it. You can leave. Thank you.”

They hear another gunshot and the sound of shattering china. But the following woman and baby’s screams show that they are both still alive. Then, Bo-Katan must lean closer to Ingrid’s phone because her voice comes out louder than before:

“That’s a reminder, that if you fail to finish the dismantling, or if you ever go back to that job on another rig, the Mandalorians will hunt you and your family to death. Same applies to each one of your colleagues.”

The phone call is stopped in the other end and Børje and his boss’s eyes widen in horror.

“M-mandalorians?” the older man says aloud, eyes scanning from Din to his friends who look equally terrified.

They all know the legends about the ecoterrorist group behind dozens of bombings at airports, shopping malls and offices of corporations in fossil-based industries. And they have all seen the news about increasingly cruel assassinations of cattle farmers, CEOs in animal product industries and politicians who oppose initiatives like carbon taxation and limitations to animal agriculture. They have heard that the tracks lead to the eco-militant cult that raises their kids and foundlings to be terrorists. But they have never expected to meet any of them eye to eye…

“Not them”, Din corrects, gesturing at his friends – or at least the three people who still were his friends an hour ago. “They're here for a peaceful demonstration only. I take all the responsibility. And I’ll do like my friend said on the phone: hunt you to death if you don’t finish dismantling this rig and then stay out of this business.”

He fires a few shots at the control panel of the pumps to make sure that they will not work again and runs to the railing at the edge of the deck. He throws himself to the other side and starts climbing down along the same chain he used to get up. Cara, Boba and Fennec quickly follow, all cursing as they go.

“What the fuck?” Boba yells when they are back on their RIB and on the way towards the Rainbow Warrior. “So that’s the cult where you grew up? You could have told us a bit earlier.”

Din nods quietly and catches the eyes of Cara who looks less furious than Boba, rather like deeply hurt, and it stings him more than any words could.

“I can’t believe I really trusted you”, she says slowly. “Like, I really thought you were committed. To our cause.”

“And I am. Just not to these methods. You see, I really had a plan to leave all that behind. When I joined Greenpeace, I did want to switch, do everything the non-violent way. But it’s been two years of tweeting and demonstrations and lobbying and… nothing happened. And then I found out about Grogu. The thought about him on the planet when all… I… I can’t…”

His throat feels like blocked from inside with something heavy and sharp. But he does not have to finish because Cara already nods.

“No matter how much I disagree, I get you. If I was a parent right now, I think I’d find the most massive rifle in existence and start blasting through these people who sabotage my child’s future.”

“We still should turn you over to the police.” Fennec eyes at Din with an icy gaze.

“Give me a RIB and let me go”, Din says. “If they catch me, I’ve earned it. But give me a chance to flee, just because I saved our mission.”

They turn to look at the rig where their banner still hangs but sounds of dismantling are already echoing from.

“They’ve probably called the coastguard as soon as we left”, Fennec says. “You should be quick.”

As soon as they are on the ship, he does not waste time. He picks up his pack and Grogu and hugs everyone quickly, letting the others explain everything to Peli later. Then he hops on a RIB with a full fuel tank, lowers it down to the water and turns on the motor, setting course towards southeast where he knows the Russian shore is, even though there is no sight of it yet. Grogu looks up at him from his lap, only curious eyes visible through the fluff of his coat, life vest and hat.

“Don’t worry”, he assures him. “Daddy just got outlawed in Norway. But we’ll get out of this country as fast as we can.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let me know if you'd like to read what happens to them in Russia, and I might write more chapters later, after I'm done with a few other drafts

**Author's Note:**

> If you would like to say a quick thank you, please [donate to Greenpeace](https://act.greenpeace.org/page/33188/donate/1) <3
> 
> If you like this AU, check out my Reylo fic [Six degrees warmer](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24317971/chapters/58626352) that is also in a climate activism setting
> 
> You're also very welcome to leave kudos/comments and follow me on [Tumblr](https://iamscoby.tumblr.com/) (more Mandalorian) or [Twitter](https://twitter.com/IamScoby) (more Reylo)


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